Rationale

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Problem summary in regard to geography sector

Economic structureThe neighbouring districts of Pinneberg and Steinburg in the south of Schleswig Holstein cover a total area of approx. 1,700 km2 (Pinneberg 662 km2 ; Steinburg 1,050 km2). The total population for the two districts is approx. 425,000 (district of Pinneberg 290,000; district of Steinburg 135,000).

The district of Pinneberg with its immediate vicinity to the city of Hamburg has a more urban structure. The proportion of the urban population to total population is 63%. In this district the population density is 436 inhabitants per square kilometre, which means that the population density is significantly higher than that of Schleswig Holstein with a total of 176 inhabitants per square kilometre. The two biggest towns are Elmshorn with a population of approx. 47,000 inhabitants and Pinneberg with a population of 39,000. In contrast to this, the district of Steinburg with a population density of 127 per square kilometre is more rural in its structural nature, whereby in past years the location of the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicon Research (ISiT) and the IZET Innovation Centre Itzehoe have given the region a new emphasis as an innovative technology and economic location. The two biggest towns are the district town of Itzehoe with its 33,000 inhabitants and Glueckstadt with approx. 12,000 inhabitants.

According to information from the IHK (Chamber of Commerce), both districts have attractive locational aspects. Particularly, the district of Pinneberg with its extremely good location for commercial enterprises, as a part of the northern economic belt around the metropolis of Hamburg, the district of Pinneberg is a strong growth area of the chamber of commerce district of the IHK. Fast railway lines connect the district and the global airport of Hamburg is quite literally at its doorstep.

The district of Steinburg is situated in the extension of the regional development axis Hamburg Elmshorn and in the area of influence of the central development location Brunsbuettel. The A23 motorway from Hamburg to the central district town Itzehoe, all the way up to Heide means that the district is in a first class location on the edge of one of the strongest economic growth regions in Europe (information provided by the IHK Kiel).

The number of enterprises belonging to the chamber of commerce district as well as their gross added value have increased in total in all areas, even though the sectoral change of the economic structure has continued to be towards the service sector.

Job market situationIn April 2001, in the job centre district of Elmshorn (district of Steinburg and Pinneberg, including the town of Norderstedt, which belongs to the district of Segeberg) a total of 19,460 people were unemployed (approx. 9%). Of this number 44.6% were women, 11.6% were young people under the age of 25, 21.3% were 55 years old and older, 12% were foreigners and 5.4% were severely handicapped (1,050 people). The latest figures from August 2001 are almost unchanged.The unemployment figure for men and for women as well as for young people under the age of 25 is almost the same (8.8% to 8.0% to 8.9%), and for foreigners at 18.7% significantly higher. The unemployment figure for severely handicapped people in the region is not available, however the average for Germany is around 18%. In 1999, the employment figure for severely handicapped persons in the job centre district was however only 3.3% (for private employers 2.9%) meaning that the figure was significantly below the German average of 4%. The figure has continued to decrease over the past years. In 1995 the figure was still at 4.5%.

There is no detailed statistical data available for people with health or psychosocial handicaps because these are often hidden handicaps, which cannot explicitly be covered by statistical data. In accordance to the experience of the job centre administration, the health insurance companies and the job agencies, it must however be assumed that these groups run a high risk of losing their positions and that they make up a substantial proportion of the long term unemployed.

Care structure and weakness analysisThe offering in the field of vocational rehabilitation and integration and help in work life covers a wide spectrum of institutions and services: seven sheltered workshops for people with disabilities, a work project and a social firm for people with mental health problems, a regional vocational and qualification organisation, two youth promotion organisations, an inter company training centre for training and qualification, two education centres operate in the region, two integration services, two advice centres for people who are unemployed and receiving welfare support, the church service for work life as well as a variety of self help groups and initiatives.

If you look at the extent of this care structure quantitatively, it is possible to observe that the help and support possibilities that are available in the districts of Pinneberg and Steinburg are relatively well built up and that they correspond to the usual standards.

However, if you look even closer at the qualitative aspects then obvious weaknesses and areas, which are in need of improvement become apparent. These can be summed up in their main points by two central problems.

1. Structural deficits in regard to holes in the network and lack of communication.2. Structural deficits due to holes in the care system.

1. The lack of networking can be seen in the interface and communication problems at four different levels. Firstly, at the level of the supporting institution, secondly, at the level of the supplier of the service, thirdly, in the field of cooperation between these two levels, and lastly at the level of cooperation with business activity.

The rehabilitation system is primarily structured in accordance to institutions, which are in part working to achieve the same goals, however doing this in accordance to the special context of their own institutional conditions and the context in regard to the law that is applicable to them. The forming of parallel structures whose individual services are not really interchangeable and only connected very loosely has lead to the much criticised fragmentation and confusion in the field of vocational, medical and social rehabilitation.Also in the districts of Steinburg and Pinneberg the available measures for occupational support, the rehabilitation and health system, vocational training as well as vocational medicine and health protection are hardly networked among each other and are accordingly poorly coordinated with one another, especially when they are funded by different organisations. The development of a central theme for the planning and implementation of individual, useful integration steps is proving to be extremely difficult for this reason.In due consideration of the providers of rehabilitative, psychosocial and job market orientated services the picture is similarly non uniform. According to existing service law, the service providers are assigned to the corresponding supporting institutions and financing structures in their offers. On the one hand this has lead to a sensible specialisation of services, on the other hand it also lead to parallel structures with limited interchangeableness and comprehensibility.

As is the case of the purchasers of services the service providers are also in lack of a suitable organisational structure both among themselves and between themselves and the purchasers, to incorporate all of the participating parties in due time in the correct guidelines and support measures, which could be introduced by combining ressources.

When you take a look at the regional cooperation channels between the authorities and service providers on the one hand and private and public employers on the other, the problems of networking and of communication become obvious. Due to the structural deficits that have already been mentioned, access to advisory and support services for the SME are not easy. The ongoing existence of alienation between the social economy and commercial companies hinders the flow of information and of communication and makes continued cooperation and networking difficult.

2. In addition to the interface problems and the lack of networking structural deficits exist in the region, which are due to the care holes in the field of prevention and intervention within companies and in outpatient rehabilitation.If you consider the fact that about one third of all notices of termination are given for reasons of health and that German companies lose approximately three million working days each year due to mental health problems of their workers, the huge importance of companies taking measures to prevent and to intervene at an early stage in the job market integration of handicapped employees soon becomes clear.It can be observed in the region of Steinburg Pinneberg that there is a considerable development need in the field of company prevention and early intervention and corresponding advisory offers for employers and for employees. This requirement is more and more becoming apparent from the companies themselves, as well as from their trade associations.The holes in support offers for companies often leads to the employee in question experiencing the fate of suffering a long period of separation from the company or even final separation from the company because the necessary help came to late or was not sufficiently coordinated.

In the region the focus of vocational support is clearly centred in so called in house concepts. Outpatient measures for rehabilitation more or less lead a shadowy existence. This has the consequence, that certain offers are neither make close to the place of living n

Objective

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Objectives

The establishment of a network for the grouping of resources and competences of all of the players involved in the integration process into the working life of handicapped people is the focus of the activities of the SPIN development partnership. The development of acceptable and long term cooperation relationships through the common work on the goals of the development partnership forms the basis for all planned activities. In the initial phase, a range of trust building measures will be necessary, e.g. in the form of mutual visits to programmes and services, working together on the implementation of training programmes as well as gender and anti discrimination trainings or conferences to discuss cases. This is all needed because close cooperation has in practice not yet been the norm for the assistance services for integration and in working life.

The setting up of two regional centres for vocational rehabilitation and work (ZEBRA) will be at the centre of the common activities. The main project responsibility for the centres is held by Bruecke Schleswig Holstein GmbH.Seven further projects working closely networked with these centres will increase and round off the offer for the target group.The background for the idea of ZEBRA is the basis of the Social Security Code IX, to achieve rehabilitation and integration planning which spreads across institutions and sponsering organisations. The implementation of this idea of a central network is, however, only observable up to now in its very early stages. Although a common service location is planned, there is, however, still a lack of definite organizational plans as to exactly what their form should be. From the point of view of the suppliers of services the wording of the law contains no specific terms of reference apart from the hint that services and institutions may join together to form working communities.

This is exactly the central idea of the development partnership. It heeds this hint and wants to develop and test new approaches for a regional network with the setting up of local associations for the suppliers of services. The aim of these centres is to ensure that people in need of help on the one hand, and the sponsering organisations as well as other institutions involved in psychosocial care on the other hand, have transparent, easy to access advice and care. Existing care and network holes should be closed and measures taken in close cooperation with the sponsering organisations to regionalize the rehabilitation by increased emphasis on the out patient approach

With the establishment of ZEBRA, the development partnership as the local alliance of the job market players promotes assistance centred on the people who are affected or threatened with (looming) unemployment, due to lack of network resp. isolation. The advice centres want to make the access to the help systems as low key as possible. Furthermore, the backing of various self help activities and the inclusion of local self help initiatives should strengthen the self help potential of the people affected.

The players who are connected with each other via the ZEBRA Service Centre will partially function as service providers for their own sub projects.

The introduction of Job Club consultation hours and self help groups in the psychiatric, and possibly in other selected departments of the two district hospitals are planned. In this connection, the project ZEBRA is closely connected with one of the projects being carried out by the two hospitals with the aim of facilitating the transfer from medical rehabilitation to vocational rehabilitation.The intention is an improved professional and organisational network of the persons carrying out the treating and the integration experts, with the goal of introducing the affected parties into the help systems earlier and thereby reducing the severity of the illness. This is to be achieved among others through the establishment of regular information, advice and support offers for patients, through various forms of inter disciplinary exchange and by the common orientation to the new methods of rehabilitation diagnostics and planning.

A central component for the construction of a well functioning regional network will be the setting up of an internet based information and communication network. The responsibility for this project, will be taking on by the inter company training centre (ÜAZ). The information network will be organised via a web based regional knowledge portal, that functions as a knowledge exchange and data base for experiences and promotes the readiness to exchange information between business activity, social service providers, affected persons and authorities. In this way, it serves, among others, research purposes, finding out contacts, services and expert knowledge resp. knowledge from people's experiences.

The Berufsgenossenschaftliche Arbeitsmedizinische Dienst (BAD), (Occupational Medical Service of the Employees' Industrial Compensation Society) is designated to be the organisation responsible for a further sub project which is planned. In close cooperation with the specialist employment services and the health insurances in the region, advisory services will be developed for companies that take the fact into consideration that measures related to the workplace to maintain the working relationship are often far less expensive than the costly measures required to reduce unemployment, especially for people who are handicapped. The advisory services that are keyed into the individual requirements of the individual companies are based on measures for in company prevention and early intervention of the health management, as well as the information, sensitization and integration advice under consideration of the diversity management approach to figure out the exact area of employment for the specific abilities of handicapped people.

The project for reintegration of the long term sick, with the craft guild health insurance (IKK) as project institution, serves the goal of the development partnership in the prevention of the exclusion of handicapped people from the job market. Unfortunately, the instrument that is financed by the health insurances is not used enough at the present time. When it is used employers and employees are often left on their own to a large extent, which means that the danger of failing is relatively high and the level of success is only modest. For this reason, the measure of step by step reintegration should be widened out to even include people who are not recognised as having a severe handicap and incorporate the measure of psychosocial accompaniment. This offer should make this measure more attractive for employers who have not wanted to use it before because accompanying support for the preparation and the implementation was not available.

An additional project component which is planned that should close the care gap of out patient rehabilitation close to home is the development of practice orientated job preparation in close cooperation between Bruecke Schleswig Holstein as the supporting institution of job projects and expert integration services with the Grone School as the educational institution, which distinguishes itself through its modular structure, strong orientation towards out patients and close links to the small and medium sized companies in the region.

Another project within the network is the creation of a regional job training association. In this respect, qualified training offers for impaired youngsters and young adults should promote the smoother passage from protected institutions into companies in the general job market. Up until now, the support mechanisms have only been able to make it possible to have qualified training with accompanying care in correspondingly recognised institutions (vocational education facilities). This often leads to the participants having to take accommodation a long way from their homes, which causes additional stress for the participants of the training programme and increases the risk of failure. In cooperation between the institutions of the training measures and the regional companies, and in agreement with the job centre and the chambers, qualified offers with modular elements and the opportunity of getting a partial certificate should be further developed, which train the impaired trainees “on the job” and thereby enable a better chance for their integration. The project institution for this undertaking is Bruecke Schleswig Holstein.

A special priority of the training association and closely tied in to the last project which is affiliated to ZEBRA, the Youth Vocational Assistance of the organisation Frischlinge e.V., has been developed for preparatory training measures for particularly disadvantaged youngsters and young people who have already failed several times in the area of schooling and in support measures. The aim of the measure is to achieve basic social stabilisation and basic vocational support as a precondition for the support and training ability of the participants, under due consideration of the problems associated with their individual backgrounds such as homelessness, violence, debt, foreigner status, single parents, poor education, etc.

With the formation of this project association and corresponding network management, new forms of cross institutional cooperation are to be established and regional ties mobilised as social capital. The overall strategy of the EP is to be implemented on this basis in accordance with the planned networking of the rehabilitation institutions and financial supporting institutions is an integrated structure of individual and flexible rehabilitation and support services is to be developed at the link to the general job market, from which impulses for employment for the target group of th